Change approach to tackle AIDS, conference hears
"Condoms, needles and the rest, we need more than just a test," activists shouted Wednesday at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, delaying a Wednesday session looking back at 25 years of battling the disease.
The way scientists, governments and citizens tackle HIV/AIDS needs to change, agreed the panel's moderator, Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet.
Many of the speakers urged policy leaders to tackle underlying drivers of diseases like AIDS, such as poverty and gender inequality.
"AIDS is a crisis of governance," said Gregg Gonsalves, an activist from the U.S. who now works in South Africa.
The panel's co-chair and the conferenceâs Canadian co-chairman, Mark Wainberg, who criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper for not attending the conference, called on world leaders to be more outspoken on AIDS, noting more die every day than those killed in train bombings, bombingsthat dominate political agendas.
AIDS is in a different league than other diseases and is"the make-or-break issue of our time," said Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
To prevent the epidemic from growing, parents need to talk to their children about safe sex and about what the consequences may be, urged Hydeia Broadbent, 22, of the United States.
When Broadbent's HIV positive status was discovered at age three, doctors told her parents she probably wouldn't live until age five.
Young people pay attention when actors and rappers promote awareness of HIV/AIDS, but the stars also need to talk about how they live positive lives, Broadbent said.
Challenges ahead
On the scientific front, Wainberg said he was optimistic that rapid access to an HIV screening test in a short time could allow people to know if they are HIV positive.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said since the first case reports on HIV more than 25 years ago, discoveries include:
- Identifying HIV as the virus that causes AIDS.
- Development of a blood test to protect the blood supply and reveal the prevalence of the disease.
- Mapping of HIV's nine genes.
- Understanding how the virus replicates and binds to immune cells.
Challenges include how the virus persists, developing a microbicide women can apply to protect themselves and a vaccine, which Fauci called a holy grail.
Protesters called on Fauci, a key advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush, to tell the president "evidence can't be ignored."
Fauci did not reply, but Piot said the failure to act on evidence that harm reduction measures such as offering safe needles promoting the use of condoms "keeps him up at night."
About 24,000 people are attending the conference, which runs until Aug. 18.